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VILE has their sights set on an extremely rare vintage game cabinet. Peril In Paradise, a tropical-themed co-op action platformer, was the first and only game released by its developers (a short-lived branch of Hinobi, as it happens), but it garnered heaps of critical acclaim despite its commercial underperformance. While it’s not fully lost media thanks to emulators, collectors and fans would pay a king’s ransom to get to play it on the authentic original hardware. The only known cabinet available to the public is in an arcade in a small, unassuming American town called Bailley. Mime Bomb and Paper Star are sent out to collect the goods, with Spinkick and Flytrap on standby in case any crimson-colored annoyances arrive and reinforcements are required.
Sure enough, Carmen and co. soon intercept the would-be game thieves, and a fight breaks out in the arcade. Star keeps Carmen busy, folding a roll of arcade tickets so she can wield it like a spiked chain whip, all while Mime loads the cabinet into a waiting disguised truck. As the semi takes off, the girls’ fight continues on top of its trailer, with Zack and Ivy in hot pursuit.
A particularly nasty bump on the road out of town makes the game start glitching and releases a boss monster: Tuaterror, a gigantic, dark green, quadrupedal reptile chimera with a crocodilian head, lengthy snake tail, powerful Komodo dragon legs, and a dome-shaped tortoise shell with a number of glassy oval pods embedded in it.
Mime Bomb, having stayed inside the semi trailer with the cargo to try and keep it secure, is the first of its victims. No one can hear him scream, so nobody knows anything’s wrong until the beast’s gigantic head tears through its metal prison. The truck swerves and crashes into a ditch, incapacitating the driver and dislodging the roof-borne combatants. The beast quickly crawls out of the wreckage and sprints across the open fields back toward Bailley in search of more prey. Zack and Ivy pull up to make sure Carmen’s okay (And to make sure those spaghetti buckets they ate earlier weren’t spiked with something. She assures them that she can see the monster too).
As Carm hops into the car, she turns back to Paper and asks what she’s going to do now. She admits that news getting out about a kaiju attack would draw far more attention to the scene of the crime than VILE would prefer, and the faculty would probably want her to not let one of her fellow agents die (They spotted Mime in a state of suspended animation inside one of the glassy shell pods, so they know he wasn’t killed by the thing). But neither of those reasons are really why she’s willing to team up with them this time. She just thinks this’ll be a lot more fun than the originally planned escort mission. She casually hops into the back seat next to Carmen, utterly unfazed by the dirty looks the siblings throw at her. As the car takes off, she contacts her back-up and gives them a status update on their mission and coordinates to follow. They’ll know what they’re looking for when they see it.
Just as they’ve almost caught up to the glitch, Player warns them about some super weird energy signals he’s picking up in their area…shortly before a portal opens in space, depositing a boxy blue van driven by two teenagers in sci-fi battle armor and visors right next to their car. Before Miko and Five can get more than a glance at their fellow pursuers or the thieves can process ANYTHING that they just saw, Tuaterror suddenly changes color from various shades of green to black and white stripes, and both vehicles slam into the seemingly empty air, bringing the chase to an abrupt, airbag-triggering halt.
Both crews get out of their vehicles to investigate the source of the phantom crash and interrogate each other. The Techs go for their usual reset button, but the impact was severe enough that their gauntlets are now on the fritz, so they can’t erase anybody’s memories. Zack and Ivy (though mostly Zack, as Ivy’s a bit preoccupied with the car) demand to know what the hell is happening. Five deflects by asking what THEY’RE doing chasing after the giant monster instead of running away from it like normal people. The siblings try some deflection of their own in an effort to not reveal that they’re internationally wanted thieves, which is very much not helped by Paper casually chiming in to call out completely honest answers to the Techs’ questions, finding it quite amusing to see Zack and Ivy squirm and try to shush her.
While all that’s happening, Carmen feels out the thin, flat, floating invisible walls that they hit and discovers they aren’t very wide. They can just go around them.
Miko and Five give as broad answers as possible vis a vis the nature of the enemy and their job descriptions. After asking for a recap (and Miko being shocked that mimes are actually real and not just a thing in cartoons), they connect the dots between the scaly scumbag’s new color palette and the sudden appearance of the invisible walls. They deduce that Tuaterror is what’s known as a Snitch Glitch. Every time it eats someone, it stores them in one of its pods and gains a new ability based on its prey/captive. However, it can only wield one absorbed power at a time, somewhat limiting the versatility of its arsenal.
This tactical lore dump is enough for the thieves to drop their questioning of the Techs and offer up a truce between their groups so they can take the virtual villain down together. Even though these two are obviously still not revealing most of the big picture, they clearly know the most about what to do in this unprecedented situation, so it’s best to just roll with it for now while innocents are in imminent danger.
Just as Tuaterror is about to make it back into Bailley and begin its feast, Paper’s requested back-up finally arrives as Spinkick and Flytrap run interference on motorcycles. Following Five and Carmen’s directions relayed via Paper’s communicator, the duo successfully kite the glitch far out into the unoccupied fields, leading it back toward the wrecked vehicles and a waiting ambush. After ensuring the glitch’s attention is focused on them over the tasty townsfolk, everybody gets ready for the boss battle.
Miko takes the initiative, getting her gauntlet to cooperate long enough to summon Ally and charging in for some hit-and-run hammer strikes. Spinkick immediately follows after her. He doesn’t know if regular punches and kicks can hurt a monster made of solidified data, but dang it he’s gonna try. Five supports them with precise energy blasts aimed at the usual suspects for weak point areas in bosses, like the eyes, open mouth, and underbelly beneath its shell.
Flytrap busts out her biggest, heaviest set of bolas to hinder the creature’s movements and slow and interrupt incoming attacks. Zack helps direct the monster’s aggro away from the DPS team when necessary via shouted insults and the occasional stunt on a motorcycle “borrowed” from Spinkick. Ivy operates the Red Drone in order to survey the battlefield, using a special scanning feature to spot any invisible walls that spawn and indicate their locations to the others so they don’t run into them.
After confirming with Five that the bodies of glitches are made of computer code (“Kinda??”), Carmen and Paper grapple up onto the back of the monster’s shell. Carmen jams a USB drive into the beast’s back and lets Player get to work analyzing it. Meanwhile, Paper, unbothered by any of the chaos and battle around her, skips over to Mime Bomb’s pod as gracefully as if she wasn’t on the back of an actively rampaging giant monster. After a few experimental taps on the glass, she shrugs, pulls out a long paper knife, and tries to use it like a crowbar to pry the pod out of the shell. Tuaterror responds poorly.
From here, the battle escalates more and more, with Tuaterror eventually managing to chomp down on the entirety of the VILE team to grant itself more and more new powers that it begins rapidly swapping between to try and fend off its remaining assailants.
•Spinkick (Mostly black with dark green bands around its limbs) - Pulling all of its limbs into its shell to spin and ricochet at incredibly high speeds like a rogue Mario Kart shell.
•Flytrap (Reddish brown with yellow-green Xs on its shell and stomach) - Detaching and regrowing its tail so that it can be launched as a whirling, entangling projectile.
•Paper Star (Half black, half light blue) - Sprouting giant, papery blades from all over its shell like Needle Kirby.
By the time Paper Star gets absorbed, the remaining fighters have finally figured out that she was actually onto something in trying to pry Mime Bomb’s pod free. The key to securing victory to this absolute menace of a multi-stage boss fight is pulling off a sort of heist - stealing the pods from out of its shell to not only deprive it of its supply of stolen abilities, but prevent it from gaining any more. This will be the most dangerous job by far, but Carmen volunteers without a second thought. To improve her chances, Miko and Five bestow upon her a speed boost and a red energy sword with just enough of a curve to its blade to make it better at prying.
As the others keep the monster’s attention divided with a relentless barrage of attacks and diversions from all sides, Carmen parkours and grapple-swings with inhuman agility across the glitch’s body to pry out and carry away the pods one by one. Each time she takes one out, the creature’s attention gets placed squarely on her shoulders, but Zack and Miko assist by giving her lifts on their respective rides. Once they’ve out-sped and outmaneuvered it for long enough, the glitch resets to its default programmed attack patterns, letting her dive back into the fray for another steal. Once all the pods are gone, Player uses his link to it to upload a nasty bundle of viruses into its code, effectively inflicting it with a swath of status effects. This primes it up for Miko and Five to deliver the dual finishing blow and finally capture the rampaging reptile.
In the end, the restored VILE operatives take the L and concede their would-be prize. Besides, after what happened, they don’t want to be anywhere near that arcade cabinet ever again. Well, most of them anyway. Paper Star just cheerily thanks the team for the fun afternoon and says to look forward to their next playdate, sending shivers down everyone’s spines. Our heroes return Peril In Paradise to the arcade, and the Glitch Techs finally get their gauntlets fully operational again, ready to wipe Team Red’s memories…only to find that Team Red slipped away while their backs were turned. It’s alright, though. They get the feeling they can trust them to keep a secret, and in exchange, the thieves know who to call if they come face-to-face with any more glitches on the loose.